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Debriefs are a type of workplace meeting that often use after events and critical incidents. Debriefs are used to review performance, promote shared learning and understanding, and improve future team performance. Similarly, reflexivity refers to the extent to which team members reflect upon and openly discuss group processes, procedures, and actions to improve future team performance. In this chapter, the authors review the separate literatures and explore the relationship between debriefs and reflexivity. While the debrief literature does focus on aspects of reflection, what occurs between the aspects of reflection, planning, and action is left unexplored. The concept of reflexivity fits well with the successful use of debriefs, as reflexivity ensures that reflection results in outcomes and moves beyond just an overview or discussion during debriefing. Additionally, important constructs such as psychological safety and sensemaking are relevant to both debriefs and reflexivity such that open and honest discussion as well as developing shared understanding are necessary for effective debriefing and reflection. Using the constructs of psychological safety and sensemaking, the authors propose a model that situates both reflexivity and effective debriefs in the context of team learning. This model integrates team reflexivity with team debriefs, provides a better understanding of how teams can carry out more effective debriefs, and explains how more effective debriefing and greater team reflexivity lead to enhanced learning and improvement in team performance.

Since the publication of Schon’s (1984) landmark text The Reflective Practitioner, there has been a surge in research literature demonstrating reflection as an essential “best practice” for teachers. However, it often feels as if reflection is forced into our lives or we happen upon it at inopportune times, creating a contradiction of un/predictability – it is touted as crucial but afforded only particular spaces or purposes, while it sneaks into our lives at inappropriate times. From our perspective, this indicates underlying flawed modernist and humanist logics at work in conceptualizations of teacher and teachers’ work –we cannot plan on bodies in motion being predictable, and just because reflection seems located in the mind, does not mean the human is solely involved in reflection. The purpose of this chapter is to explore reflexivity as un/predictable in order to generate new possibilities and potential that are not bound by modernism’s penchant toward structure and humanism’s myopic self-awareness. Via co/autoethnography, we present individual narratives illustrating our relationships with reflexivity in various spaces of our lives. By using various types of mirrors (e.g., classic mirror, interrogation mirror, window as mirror, water as mirror) as analytical devices, we illustrate reflexivity as embodied processes that emerge un/predictably as we traverse various geotemporal–political locations and engage with other human, non-human and material bodies. By recasting reflexivity as dynamic and fluid, we raise possibilities for spontaneously incorporating reflexivity into teaching–learning and research, thereby untethering critical reflection from modernist and humanist logics that attempt to corral reflection into discrete activities and truncate its potential for transforming praxis.

Many papers have been written about group reflexivity. Testimonials by practitioners often contain strong claims about its performance benefits. Research papers, by scientists, seem to support such claims at first glance, but a closer look reveals methodological problems and weak results, even in the studies that show performance benefits, and there are several studies that show no performance benefits. We have begun our own program of research on group reflexivity, and so far, we have found no performance benefits either. All of this suggests that enthusiasm for group reflexivity should be tempered, until more and better research has been done.

Mead's notion of “reflexivity” is one of his key ideas. Our mind “bends” or “flexes” back to itself in this process. Mead argues that universal ideas were first attained reflexively when humans could understand their own communications; for example, when the primate mother could both indicate to her children where food was and also give herself the same message. These two cases, viewed together, constituted the first “universal” (for Mead). This contrasted with the traditional theory of universals, which had the knower abstracting the universal idea, i.e. the “essence,” from a group of particulars. Mead's universal is not essentialist but linguistic. It is syntactic and not ontological. This allowed him to sidestep the problem of essences (since no one could find any, anyway). Mead's version shows how reflexivity may have first originated, in the evolutionary process, though he does not actually prove this. I examine reflexivity itself here, singling out several varieties. I look at self-referencing pronouns (especially “I”) and show how Cooley's observations of his daughter's use of pronouns clarified this process. I also examine the reflexivity of recognizing one's own face in the mirror. Mead said the body could not be reflexive, but self-recognition in a mirror is a form of bodily reflexivity. And there are several others, for example the varieties of bodily meditation, that Mead missed. Recognizing this reflexivity introduces the body (and, therefore, gender) early in Mead's theory, rather than late, as he has it. This point also opens him to a badly needed infusion of feminist thought, such as that of Nancy Chodorow. The self-recognizing mirror face is, as Lacan points out, “all smiles.” This insight also introduces emotion early into Mead. As it is, he has emotion late, as a kind of afterthought. This paper then promotes a badly needed feminization of Mead.

The concept that an organization's actions or inactions constrain or enhance its future options and outcomes and – ultimately – its long-term survival, is here referred to as the organization's viability. Following a dynamic capabilities framework, we identify two communication practices that help develop both transactive memory systems and a firm's long-term viability, information allocation and collective reflexivity, and call for the development of others. We discuss the interrelationship of these two practices as nurturing the development of transactive memory systems critical for organizational long-term viability. We then discuss organizational structures that prompt or constrain the development of these two communication practices – organizational members’ perceived environmental uncertainty, perceptions of time as scarce, feedback cycles between actions and outcomes, and organizational members’ temporal focus – and offer propositions concerning these relationships. We emphasize the relevance of TMS through the exploration of three characteristics of the relationship between TMS and the long-term viability of organizations. Finally, we conclude with recommendations for organizational development practitioners for fostering TMS through the facilitation of sites for collective reflexivity.

This chapter asks: ‘How often do we as social scientists question the validity of our theories and our findings? How often do we reflexively examine the distortions in the lenses we use to analyse organizations? ‘It proceeds to answer these questions by defining reflexivity and presenting six perspectives on reflexive analysis that build on and extend previous analytical treatments of reflexivity, especially that by Alvesson, Hardy, and Harley (2008). Illustrations of the six are drawn from my own experiences as well as those of other scholars. The intention is to stimulate greater interest in reflexivity and provoke other scholars to look more reflexively at their own work.

The increased and varying presence of spirituality within mental health services has assisted practitioners to consider how individual beliefs might shape behaviors, relationships, and communication patterns. Constraints arise when assumptions about the meaning and nature of the spiritual beliefs is associated with an organized religion such as Christianity, which can hinder open inclusion within clinical and supervisory practice. When there is a dominant discourse about how Christianity (and other religions) has inherent and current instances of historical abuse at the foreground, policy-makers have used this as reason to be cautious about open inclusion in practice. This chapter seeks to open a more integrated conversational space between spirituality, reflexivity, and black mental health.

Given there is a great deal of scope for transforming mental health services for Black service users there remains a plethora of possibility for joining systemic reflexivity with spirituality (Cook, Powell, & Sims, 2010). There is less discourse around the applicability of spirituality expressed within leadership and supervisory practice; however, it can play a significant role for leaders, managers, and supervisors who practice from positions of spiritual awareness, orientation, and competence. There is particular relevance for Black African-Caribbean practitioners that consider they have a history of strength-based spiritual approaches and support systems inherent within their cultural identity (Boyd-Franklin, 1989). Consideration needs to be given as to how the associated concepts of collaboration, community cohesion, and support systems might assist professionals within leadership and organizational development roles as part of addressing Black mental health service provision.

Purpose – This chapter critically engages with a positively oriented emotional reflexivity with the aim of improving inclusivity in bereavement research.

Methodology/Approach – The heartfelt positivity methodology intentionally creates positivity through the everyday practices of academic research. In this chapter, emotional reflexivity is guided by the heartfelt positivity methodology to identify and learn from collaborators’ emotions. It focuses on collaborators whose involvement in the academic community falls beyond that of the immediate research team at different stages of bereavement research.

Findings – The emotions of collaborators involved in bereavement research have been overlooked, yet their inclusion reveals a significant potential for the sanctioning of bereaved mothers’ potential participation in bereavement-focused research or breastmilk donation programmes. Key learnings that may be applied to conducting future bereavement research are (i) the potential for collaborators to also be bereaved parents (ii) the continued need to strive for the inclusion of bereaved parents in research and (iii) to extend the methodological principle of emotional reflexivity to include research collaborators when researching emotionally sensitive topics.

Originality/Value – This chapter argues that bereaved mothers’ knowledge and practices of thriving in hard times can either be fostered or derailed at different stages of the research cycle depending on which narratives frame human suffering. For researchers and collaborators, emotional reflexivity is crucial to inclusive research practices and knowledge translation.

Purpose – The purpose of this article is to investigate consumption discourses in contexts characterized by multiple cultures and intercultural contacts, as multicultural contacts and multiple migrations challenge existing consumer acculturation models based on a dualistic process of acculturation. This chapter explores empirically the character of cultural reflexivity and its expression in consumers’ discourses. Given that nostalgia is one prominent dimension of the migration conceptualization, we seek to understand how the role of nostalgia changes in contexts where consumers are decreasingly territorially embedded agents.

Methodology – The study rests on in-depth analysis of migrant narratives from two research phases. While the first phase encompasses in-depth interviews, the second one combines interviews and observations to provide a depiction of intercultural contact within the micro cosmos of a multicultural apartment.

Findings – The findings of this chapter illustrate how migrants develop different nostalgic discourses, to either (re-)appropriate the Expatriate as defined by James (1999), or to appropriate global consumptionscapes through nostalgia for the routine.

Research implications – On the basis of these findings, the article discusses cultural reflexivity in terms of naturalization and cultivation narratives (Wilk, 1999), proposing shifts between reflexive and routinized consumption practices as basis for consumers’ cultural reflexivity.

Originality/value of chapter – The contribution of this chapter is firstly a contextualized and empirically grounded definition of cultural reflexivity. Secondly, it demonstrates that migrants’ consumption discourses revolve more around disruptions of routines than around acculturation processes. Thirdly, the chapter illustrates the use of nostalgia for emotional valorization of cultures beyond classical home cultural authenticity discourses.

Purpose – The purpose of this chapter is to analyse the influence of offshoring on entrepreneurial activity (i.e. the introduction of new products and services).

Methodology/approach – Conceptual

Practical implication – The framework proposed in this study provides some indication to managers about designing an offshoring strategy. Particularly, we aim to inform managers that offshoring various functions may differentially influence firm innovation and that the effect also depends on the governance mode used for the offshore operations and managerial oversight of the offshoring process.

Originality/value of chapter – We provide a theoretical framework that proposes that the offshoring of knowledge intensive services (KIS) and that of labour-intensive services (LIS) will differentially influence the ability of firms to introduce new products and services. While the offshoring of KIS has an inverted U-shaped influence on entrepreneurial activity, the offshoring of LIS has a positive impact. In addition, we propose that these relationships are conditioned by organisational (i.e. governance mode) and managerial (i.e. TMT reflexivity) factors. Specifically, we argue that the degree of integration with the offshore affiliate and TMT reflexivity each moderate the non-linear relationship between offshoring KIS and innovation in such a way that the positive effects of low levels of offshoring KIS will be stronger and the negative effects of high levels of offshoring KIS will be lower. In addition, we argue that the degree of integration constrains and TMT reflexivity enhances the relationship between offshoring LIS and innovation.